Bearing Wear Example #1 – Bearing Inner Race Fault

In every industry, particularly manufacturing, businesses depend on a diverse array of physical assets to meet customer expectations. Certain assets, while not necessarily the most expensive, are fundamental to the production of goods or services, underlining their significance in operational processes. The disruption of these pivotal assets can trigger a domino effect, disrupting the entire supply chain and potentially halting operations. Therefore, it is imperative for businesses to implement comprehensive maintenance management strategies for these key assets.

RCM may have been thought of as a strategy best left to large organizations. That may have been a perfectly logical assumption. Small-to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and lean operations simply seem to have less money to invest in and fewer resources to cope with the many activities required for RCM success. Now, however, out of joint academic/industry collaboration in Spain, comes information that may help begin to put these types of popular misconceptions to rest. The RCM methodology described in this overview of the Spanish research has been adapted to meet the specific needs of today’s smaller, leaner organizations. And it is not just a theory, either. The practicality of this approach is being confirmed through actual testing in SME and/or lean companies.

Reliability Block Diagrams have been around for a very long time, helping system engineers understand how the various elements, and their relationships, could impact the overall reliability and operation of the system. Taking the effort to diagram a system logically can provide great insight into where the weak links are. In some cases, an RBD can expose that your assumed redundancies are not actually as effective as you think they are.